Happy birthday Pooja

Was it really Miyashita Monday today? It felt more like Whacky Wednesday! The weather was beautiful when we arrived at school with warm temperatures and sun-shine and then the rain came down. The weather per-son must have really been mixed up this morning.

Nevertheless, our day was filled with fun, imagination and some new games which our teachers learned at a workshop that they attended on Saturday. It was called “Vibrant Circle Times” and the lady who pre-sented it, was filled with passion, joy and fun. She said that “if people want to be preschool teachers, they need to be fun loving people”. We think that our teachers are fun loving people and they can also be seri-ous some times, which is okay. Having a balance of fun and seriousness sounds good for us!

We were happy to welcome Tai-ga back after his holiday to the USA where he went to Disney-land in California. It feels like his holiday went really quickly. He was here. He wasn't here. And he’s here again. Taiga made his Hina Matsuri picture and spent a lot of time cutting shapes out to make the clothes of “Ohinasama” and “Odairisama”. He even added some cherry blossoms at the end to finish his picture off. Our Hina Matsuri pictures helped us work on a num-ber of fine motor skills. We folded origami paper and Hisami reminded us to iron the paper to make the edges smooth. We used scissors and cut out shapes that we wanted to, that resembled the ones on the pictures and cut outs that we saw. At this
time of year, there are so many ways to depict “Ohinasama” and “Odairisama”. We chose this way. Another fine motor skill that we used was drawing and holding markers. We try to hold them correctly with the right pincer grip and sufficient pressure. Our teachers try to give us col-oured pencils more often as we need to use true pressure when using them. When we use markers, we don’t even need to use pressure as the marker makes colour on a page without any pressure.

Part of our day is always filled with free play where we have the opportunity to use toys and equipment in our own unique way and to engage with our friends. These times of day are varied and filled with many wonderful teaching moments. Our teach-ers take photos of us when we are playing in this way and the photos depict exactly what we are doing. They sometimes chat to us and ask us about our play and other times, they just observe. Here are some photos from our free play this morning.

We enjoyed our gym-nastics lesson today and one of the new things that we learnt was in connection with throwing and catch-ing. Last week we threw a ball across a line while standing still. Today, Miyashita sensei told us that if we run and throw, the ball will go much further. We tried it, and it was true. Many of us were able to throw the ball, much further, than if we had been stand-ing still. We will try it in the park when the weather improves. We also practiced catching a ball and are learning to keep our hands together and bring the ball to our chest when we catch it. The game that makes us so excitable and which we love is “Dodgeball” and we did our best to dodge the ball and not get hit…...HELP!

We had an extra fun thing to do today and it was celebrate Pooja’s birthday. She had no idea why Gaelle needed her in the office. We were all hiding downstairs in Buds Class. Shelley told us an imaginative story about a bowl that was empty and needed the children to put something inside it. The bowl really loved baking cakes so we filled it with imaginary flour, sug-ar, milk, cream and we mixed all the in-gredients together. When everything was mixed together we poured the mix-ture into a bowl and put it into the oven. We first put our oven gloves on so that we didn’t burn because the oven was hot. Then we waited for the beautiful smell of baked goods to come into the class-room. It was fun to bake an imaginary cake while we were waiting for Pooja to come into the classroom. We also sang while John played the guitar. We sang Happy Birthday in a whisper and then we sang it by just mouthing the words. We were so quiet when we were mouthing the words. Eventually Pooja arrived in the classroom with a huge surprise. She had no idea! We waved our magic wands and Dev put a crown on her head. We waved our magic wands and a cake arrived with a candle on it. We waved our magic wands and cards and flowers arrived. It was so much fun.

We played with some pliable wire and bent it into shapes while Kai carefully designed a wearable music stand for Shelley, for the taiko show on Sunday. At the end of the day, we told our teachers: “There is nothing on the table for us to play with”. Usually they put something on the table, but to-day was different. There were no toys. Griffin said: “We can have a meeting”. So Hisami put a candle on the table and we sat together and played a noisy game of “Sai, showa, gu”. Hisami sat down with us and some of us told her that she can’t sit with us, because she is not a kid. She said that she wants to be a kid. Then we said: “The meeting is finished”. Our teachers were not sure that it was a meeting.

We love it when they come back from a workshop and teach us some things that they learnt there. The one thing that they learnt and will continue to do is play “old fashioned” games. Shelley was so happy when Jenny Moseley, the workshop facilitator said that all games that many of the older teachers learnt when they were younger, are some of the best games for us to learn.

Thanks for a fabulous day. Stay dry in the rain!
Love all the children in Flowers Class.